Chapter 14 Angelina #2
He obeys immediately. Fingers curling around the wooden slats, knuckles going white with the effort of holding on instead of reaching for me.
"Don't move." My voice comes out steadier than I feel.
"Is this revenge?" His voice is strained, rough.
"Do you want it to be?"
The corner of his mouth twitches, not quite a smirk, but close. Like he knows exactly what I'm doing and he'll let me do whatever I want.
"I want whatever you're willing to give me."
Whatever I'm willing to give.
But eight years is a long time to unlearn. Eight years of making myself small, of learning that wanting things only made them hurt worse when they didn't happen. My fingers hover instead of grip.
I stroke him slowly, base to tip, relearning the feel of him, the way he twitches when I run my thumb across the head. His hips buck before he catches himself, thighs trembling with the effort of staying still.
"Eyes on me."
His gaze locks onto mine. Dark, desperate, absolutely focused.
Do it.
Cole doesn't push. Doesn't pull. Just watches me with those dark eyes, waiting for whatever I decide to do next.
I lower my mouth and take him in.
The sound he makes, wrecked, broken, something between a groan and a prayer, makes my pussy throb. I take him deeper, feel him hit the back of my throat, and his hands tighten on the headboard hard enough that the wood creaks.
This. This is what I need.
I'm not hiding in darkness, not lying still, not being grateful for scraps.
I'm taking.
I work him with my mouth and hand together, setting a rhythm designed to destroy. Japanese starts bleeding through his English, fragments I don't understand, prayers or curses or both, the careful control he wears like armor finally cracking under my hands.
"Yamete—" His hips jerk. "If you don't stop, I'm going to—"
I pull off. Look up at him.
He's shattered. Chest heaving, cock twitching, eyes wild with need. A bead of moisture trails down his length.
The man underneath me is nothing like the boy from college. Harder. Scarred. Built like a weapon.
And mine. Right now, completely mine.
My hands trace down his chest. Over ridges of muscle that weren't there twelve years ago. The starburst scar on his ribs. His stomach contracts under my touch, breath catching.
"Please." The word costs him something. Everything. "Let me touch you."
He said please.
Adrian never said please. Adrian took and demanded and criticized and never once in three years asked for anything, because asking would have meant acknowledging that I had the power to refuse.
"No." I climb back up, straddle his stomach with my wetness pressed against his abs. "Not yet."
The frustration on his face is beautiful.
"I want your mouth." My voice doesn't waver. "On me. Now."
He stops breathing.
I shift higher, positioning myself over his face. Close enough that he can feel the heat, see the evidence of how much this is affecting me.
For one heartbeat, he doesn't move. Just stares up at me like I've demanded something impossible.
Then his hands release the headboard. Grip my thighs. Pull me down onto his face.
His tongue drags through me and my back arches. Dio, sì. Slow, deliberate, learning me the way he learns everything. Thorough. Methodical.
"Fuck."
I grab the headboard for balance. The same slats his hands just abandoned.
Adrian never did this. The few times I asked, before I learned not to ask, he'd looked at me like I'd suggested something disgusting.
That's not really my thing. Like my pleasure was an inconvenience.
Like wanting anything made me demanding and difficult and all the other words he used to make me small.
Cole's tongue circles my clit, and I stop thinking about Adrian.
I stop thinking about anything.
My hips roll against his mouth, chasing pressure. His fingers dig into my thighs hard enough to bruise. I want them to bruise, want the marks tomorrow, want evidence that this happened. And when he slides two fingers inside me without warning, the moan that tears from my throat is obscene.
"Cole—" His name comes out broken. "Per favore—"
He works me with tongue and hand together. Relentless. Reading every tremor, every gasp. I'm shaking, grinding against his face, and the pressure builds and builds until I come with a cry I couldn't muffle if I tried.
Wave after wave. He keeps his mouth on me through all of it, fingers still moving, wringing every last pulse until I'm oversensitive and trembling and have to pull away.
His face glistens. Wet with me.
He licks his lips. Slowly. Deliberately.
Madonna.
I slide down his body on shaking legs. He's still hard, impossibly hard, and when I wrap my hand around him, he hisses through his teeth.
"Do you have any idea—" His voice is ragged. "What you taste like?"
"Show me."
I kiss him before he can answer. Taste myself on his tongue. Salt, musk, and mine. His hands fly to my hips, gripping, and this time I don't stop him.
"Inside me." I position myself over him, feeling him press at my entrance. "Now."
I sink down in one smooth motion.
The sound we both make, I'll remember it forever. He fills me completely, stretching me in ways that border on too much after years of nothing, and the slight burn grounds me in my body because this is real. This is happening. I'm choosing this.
I start to move.
Slow at first. Rolling my hips, finding the angle that makes heat coil in my belly again. His hands grip my waist, not guiding, just holding on. Like I'm the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth.
"Faster." The command surprises me, my voice demanding and certain.
He snaps his hips up to meet me and I gasp. Yes. Yes. The sound of skin on skin fills the room. I brace my hands on his chest, ride him harder, chasing the second orgasm building.
"Kirei." The word comes out guttural. "Kanpeki—you're perfect—fuck—"
My pussy clenches around him.
"I'm close—" His voice is strained, a warning. "Angelina, I can't—"
"Not yet." I slow my pace. Make him feel every inch. "Not until I say."
The sound he makes is almost pained. Head tipped back, tendons straining, every muscle tight with the effort of holding back.
I have this. I have control.
The man who watches me, who switched my pills, who plans seven steps ahead, is shaking underneath me because I told him to wait.
I ride him faster again. The angle is perfect, friction exactly where I need it, the coil winding tighter and tighter—
"Now." I barely recognize my voice. "Come now."
His whole body arches off the mattress.
The Japanese pouring out of him is beyond translation, guttural, broken. He pulses inside me, hot and overwhelming, and the feeling of him letting go completely drags me over the edge with him.
His hand covers my mouth to catch my cry, and this time there's no panic. No flash of memory. Just his palm, warm and steady, while the orgasm crashes through me in waves.
When it finally fades, I collapse onto his chest.
We stay like that. Breathing ragged. Hearts pounding. Sweat-slicked and trembling and thoroughly, completely undone.
I surface slowly.
His arm is draped across my waist, heavy and warm, possessive even in stillness. His fingers rest against my hip, not gripping but present. Claiming space on my body like it belongs to him.
Maybe it does. Maybe that's what I decided when I walked through his door.
We've been lying here for what feels like hours, but is probably twenty minutes.
Long enough that my breathing has synced to his without permission, and my muscles have gone loose and liquid against him.
Long enough that this has stopped feeling like sex and started feeling like something far more dangerous.
Adrian always looked disappointed after. Like I'd failed some test I didn't know I was taking. He'd roll away immediately, shower, return to his side of the bed with a wall of space between us. Stay on your side, cara.
Cole's arm tightens slightly when I shift. Not restraining. Just reluctant. Like even in the haze of the aftermath, some part of him is tracking my movements, calculating the probability that I'm about to leave.
He's not wrong to calculate.
Adrian made me feel like I'd done something wrong. Cole's holding me like I did something right.
Stop it. Don't compare them. Don't make Cole into something he's not just because he's not Adrian.
I extract myself carefully. His arm releases immediately. Awake, then, not asleep. He let me go because I wanted to go, not because he wanted me to leave.
Why does that make it worse?
I find my clothes on the floor. Tank top inside-out, but I don't care. Sleep shorts tangled with his discarded pants near the foot of the bed. I pull them on without looking at him, though I can feel his eyes tracking every movement.
Always watching. Even now.
"You don't have to leave."
His voice is quiet, no pressure behind the words, just offering.
"Yes. I do."
The sheets rustle as he sits up. I can feel the question forming before he asks it.
"Why?"
The question stops me at the door. My hand on the knob, cold metal against my palm.
Because sleeping next to you is a different kind of naked. Because I can give you my body but I'm not ready to give you my mornings. Because waking up in your arms would mean something I'm not prepared to mean.
"Because I can't." Honest. Incomplete. The closest I can get to the truth right now.
Silence stretches between us. I wait for the argument. For him to tell me I'm wrong, that I'm overthinking, that I should just stay and stop being difficult.
"Okay."
That's it. Just okay. He offers no persuasion, no manipulation, no attempt to make me feel guilty for choosing to leave.
I look back then because I can't help it.
He's propped on one elbow, sheet pooled low on his hips, lamp catching the angles of his face and the ink on his shoulder blade. He's watching me with an expression I can't quite read. Not disappointed, not angry. Something softer. Something that looks almost like understanding.
"I'll see you in the morning."
"Try not to watch me walk away on the cameras."
"No promises."
The honesty startles a laugh out of me, sharp, unexpected. He's not even pretending he won't. The audacity of it, the complete lack of shame, is somehow funnier than it should be.
His mouth curves into something that's almost a smile. Softer than his usual control allows.
We're both insane. This is insane.
I slip out before the laughter turns into something else.
The landing is cold after the warmth of his room.
I cross back to the left hall, bare feet silent on the carpet runner. Chesca's door is still cracked three inches. I push it open just enough to see her. Still asleep, Aaron Bear tucked under her arm, nightlight casting soft purple shadows across her peaceful face.
Safe. Untouched by any of this.
My throat tightens. I count her breaths the way I have since the night she was born, since those terrifying NICU hours when counting meant she was still alive.
Uno, due, tre, quattro...
Forty-seven breaths before I make myself walk away.
My own bed is cold when I climb in. Too much space, sheets that don't smell like saffron and cedar, a mattress that feels wrong after the warmth of him.
I lie awake staring at the ceiling, counting the cracks in the plaster I've memorized over eight years in this house.
One, two, three...
There are forty-seven. I've counted them a thousand times, the way I count Chesca's breaths when the fear gets too loud.
A door clicks somewhere across the landing. Faint. The monitoring room, maybe. I wonder if he's awake too, staring at screens instead of ceilings, watching the perimeter instead of counting cracks.
Sleep doesn't come for hours. When it finally does, I dream of his voice breaking on my name and the way he said understood like surrender was something he'd give only to me.